The Switch
by coli narago
Summary: When Alfons Heidrich dies, The Gate gives him a choice. He can return to Germany, pray for a miracle and die of his wound, or he can give it all up and move to Amestris. No wound, no disease. He chooses a new home.


A/N: Wow, it's been so long since I've written. My writer's block is insane recently. I really need to get writing again…

In any case, I've started with a short prologue to determine if the story is even worth writing at all. Thanks for reading, guys.

Alfons' POV

Other worlds. Gates to another dimension. Boys in armor. A magic called "alchemy". Artificial humans.

Who would have ever believed that all of Edward's stories could have carried a grain of truth? The truth of this alchemy, of family, of friends, of war. The truth in "The Gate", an attractive thief, legendary conman playing generous lord, drawing seekers of knowledge like moths to a flame.

Yet here I am, standing in the center of what would appear to be the spiral of light. Another hopeless soul in a void of questions and lack of logic. A solitary, undesirable place drawing me in with the promise of curiosity's water, of quenching the irrefutable longing to _know. Faces, objects, events and scenes I don't recognize mingle with the surprising and even startling ones I do swirl before my eyes, the rest of my body suspended in a space unexplorable._

_After a few minutes in this strange new pool of consciousness, I realize it's a matching game. The baker down the street is some sort of officer. The doctor's apprentice, an engineer. Is that the general's daughter, Riza? Ahh, yes. I met her at the factory's fundraising function last year._

_Officer Hughes. Gracia. A family? A little girl._

_A funeral._

_I'm watching an untold story. Not all at once, though. Spaced out, sorted by time, or perhaps by location?_

_Guns going off. German guns, private pistols, models I don't recognize._

_Blood._

_Some sort of military office. There's the baker again and Ms. Hawkeye. In the military? Women? The doctor's apprentice is back, too. And now Mr. Havoc, the cigar salesman, is with them._

_In the next second, the scene is gone._

_The next frame is of a desert city. Gypsy-skinned people. Noah has died the front of her hair pink. She's smiling, laughing, holding a young man's hand. She is younger than the Noah I know._

_A man in a dark jacket with his hand up. He's walking down a dirt road, seeming just having left a good sized house on grassy hill. A woman's crying comes from inside. Two little boys, the oldest no more than three, run to the door. He calls for his father._

_Noah's crying. It's a funeral. There's a huge mass of people. It's an open casket. Judging by the crowd, at least Noah's boyfriend was loved._

_The house from before, though in daylight. Two blond, happy boys run down the road. They both have books in their hands, one with the one of Edward's hexagram things one the cover. A simple transmutation circle. As they near the house, I realize the eldest is Edward._

_I must have gone into shock._

_The air is cool, and when my eyes flit open endless white light floods them. Suddenly my head hurts worse than my chest._

"_He awakes."_

_I spin my head around to find the source of the loud, grainy voice._

"_You are Alfons Heiderich, correct?"_

_Finally I locate the person. Or… whatever that thing is. The sight of the black mush throws my stomach violently into my chest and my mind reeling._

"_You have two choices."_

_If I don't get a grip on myself soon, I'll go into shock again. _

"_Two doors to choose from."_

_What? What was it talking about now? Finally words from earlier begin to sink in as these new ones fly right by._

_A choice. Is this thing always so blatant, or just with newcomers?_

"_If you go back to your world, you will be dead. A gunshot through the heart. Buried in the ground and mourned if lucky." Now I'm slowly catching up to speed. Words are processing as they're said. "Or you can go to the second world. You can live there until your undetermined death, escaping your gunshot wound and lung disease." It pauses again, grinning foolishly. "Decide."_

_Hold on. This is too much. Could I really live… in Ed's world?_

__

_Cold. My arms are chilly through my thin clothes, nothing more than a light short and ordinary work pants. My bare hands can feel the freezing earth, loose and riddled with small stones. The inside of my eyelids are completely black, the red to be detected. I'm in pitch blackness._

_Something compels me to open my eyes anyway, and I find that I was wrong. Light from some indeterminate source outlines the ground, ruins all around me and the distinct lack of sky. Am I in another, larger building? No, that wouldn't make sense. Underground? Even less likely. A few moments of blinking rapidly an attempt to stand up bring me to the conclusion that I must be in some museum exhibit, a life sized model of an old civilization… or something like that. It's probably just after hours._

_Standing up, however, was a failed attempt. The rocky ground slips beneath my feet and I land on my back again. A searing pain on my right arm begins, and I grasp at it tightly. Great, blood. It didn't really feel that bad, just painful. After a second, more successful attempt and a little more sliding around, my museum theory died._

_I'm alone in a strange world with a strange terrain that's difficult to walk on in the dark. I have nothing with me, no idea where the nearest exit is, a nasty gash in my arm, and only a slideshow of flashing scenes and events to guide me._

_But I'm alive, and that's enough at the moment. My chest is light, I can breathe freely in this musky air, and I can't taste the sickeningly copper taste of my own blood. If I was lucky, I wouldn't for a long time._


End file.
